Author: Robert Greenberger

Most times, we read our comics and watch our movies and television programs and come in at the beginning or during an act of gruesome violence. Often, we then see the crime scene investigators do their thing and then leave. But what becomes of the crime scene afterwards?

Answering that question is the moving Sunshine Cleaning, an independent film starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. The well-received film comes out on DVD this Tuesday from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Adams plays Rose Lorkowski, a single parent stuck in a dead end job, trying to raise her young son. Raised by her failed salesman father (Alan Arkin), it fell to Rose to raise her younger sister Norah. Rose was once on top of the world, captain of the cheerleading team, but there she is, a decade-plus later and she’s still sleeping with the quarterback (Steve Zahn), despite his being married to someone else. She aspires to more, maybe real estate, but life keeps dragging her down.

The quarterback turned police detective suggests try her hand at the lucrative crime scene clean up business.  Rose convinces the hapless Norah to join her in this new venture and [[[Sunshine Cleaning]]] is born. We watch them figure out what the business is all about, stumbling on their own, until they meet up with Winston (Clifton Collins, Jr.), proprietor of a cleaning supply company who provides advice.

For a 91 minute film, there are many themes touched on in Megan Holley’s debut script. Love and loss, taking responsibility, struggling to raise a child and sister and father, missing a dead mother and more. Everything is intertwined as the story progresses but it’s not all neatly tied up by the end. Life’s a messy business, the tag line tells us, and director Christine Jeffs does a nice job showing us exactly that. While Rose is serious and trying to do right by her family, she does so at the cost of her own freedom and happiness. Norah is directionless and gains her first taste of adulthood by working with Rose and by trying to befriend the daughter of a victim. Meantime, we’re left uncertain as to what is wrong with young Oscar (Jason Spevack) – is it ADD, a closet genius or something else. He’s also just trying to get by while being looked after by his grandfather and aunt.

The performances are somber and dead on. Adams, normally gorgeous and perky, allows herself to look dowdy and sad while Blunt, more of a chameleon actress, fully inhabits Norah. Arkin plays Arkin, a man past his prime, terrified of disappointing his family yet doing it again and again as his schemes to make a buck fail. The core cast is ably supported, notably by Collins in an understated part.

The movie comes in both widescreen and full screen, which is a somewhat unnecessary option. The sole unique extra is a wonderful 11 minute featurette interviewing two older women who really do this sort of work. They show where the film was dead on and where it took some liberties, plus showed how they did some of their work.

Robot Chicken has been satirizing popular culture with tremendous success since its debut on Cartoon Network’s [adult swim] in 2005. The brainchild of executive producers Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, the show has skewered all manner of films, television series, and celebrities.

Their most successful outing was the [[[Star Wars]]] Special, first aired in June 2007. The wild success in terms of ratings, critical commentary, and DVD sales meant a sequel was inevitable. The [[[Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II]]] special aired last November and was recently released on DVD by Warner Home Video. It was also nominated for a 2009 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour).

Amazingly, the 22-minute special has been expanded and extended so the disc is filled with 93 minutes of material. You have the original broadcast version, plus the 38 minute extended versions and then 33 minutes of extras.  That’s pretty impressive.

The special is also pretty damned funny. The short sketches plays with most of the six films, mainly [[[A New Hope]]] although the AT-AT race is inspired from [[[The Empire Strikes Back]]]. All you favorite characters are represented with original performers Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and Ahmed Best reprising their film roles. As a result, it sounds and feels right.

Highlights include a Stormtrooper bringing his daughter to work and involving her in the fight with the rebels at the opening of the fourth film. The Geico commercials having people interpret real life incidents gets a once over with Jar-Jar Binks, in his best role yet, trying to help a woman. Throughout the special, there are great sight gags and one-liners. Obviously, not every joke or sketch is brilliant, but they never fail to amuse.

Clearly, the extended version gives you more to enjoy and plays better than the truncated broadcast edition. The tons of extras show you how the stories were conceived, from Green acting out a sketch for the animators, to a look at the production designs and set construction. A feature on the stop-motion process shows how much time goes into shooting these figures and gives you new appreciation for the art form.

A short shows the cast and crew trekking to Skywalker Ranch, now in the Presidio, to screen the finished show for the staff, including George Lucas, who at least gets the joke. Another short features the 501st Legion presenting awards to Green and Senreich.

Finally, there’s a ton of commentary, as amusing as the shorts themselves, from a ton of folk including Best, Williams, and unexpected folk such as Frank Oz.

Just prior to Comic-Con International, NBM’s David Seidman sent out a note suggesting to reviewers that their just-released [[[Happy Hooligan]]] comic strip collection had been overlooked. [[[Gadzooks]]], I thought, he’s right and had them rush a copy over to be read. Having just finished the 112-page volume, I can say this early example of popular comic strip humor was undeservedly overlooked.

The better remembered characters from the comic strips have crowded the book shelves of late, from IDW’s exploding line to Fantagraphics beautiful year-by-year collections. Think of a character you grew up reading and odds are, there is a collection out there or one already announced.

But, the real pioneering strips such as Hooligan have been left behind. Under their Forever Nuts banner, NBM and Editor Jeffrey Lindenblatt seek to fix that, first with [[[Mutt & Jeff]]] and now Happy Hooligan. When a strip endures for 32 years, especially from that first era, it clearly spoke to an audience. Created by illustrator turned cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper, the strip followed a fairly strict formula but never ceased to be entertaining or inventive.

Back then, as explored in Cole Johnson’s closing essay, each strip had a gimmick and stuck with it. In this case, Hooligan, usually accompanied by his brothers, Gloomy Gus and Montmerency, saw something amiss, try to correct it and in so doing wind up causing trouble and usually being punched or jailed for his efforts.  Week after week this went on and the theme rarely varied until the strip was in its second decade. In six evenly constructed panels, Opper set things up and had them pay off in a breezy way while each panel was filled with business. Usually, Gus would see trouble coming and warn the reader, a role that was later filled his Happy’s three nephews (an idea lifted later by others, notably Carl Barks), and we never learned which brother was the father.

Opper would take his time with the strip’s stories, sending the trio of siblings to visit the world but just sailing from New York took months. In each country, Opper used cultural elements for his humor and invariably, the trouble would have him bashed and jailed as the international cast of gendarmes, cops, and other law enforcement types protected their people.

Later, Happy took on various jobs so the setting for the chaos altered but the gags rarely did.

Allan Holtz’s informative introduction gives us a look at Opper’s career and establishes why Hooligan and Opper succeeded. While producing the Sunday page, Opper through the years also wrote and drew accompanying features, totaling fourteen other strips until he put his brush down in 1932 when his eyesight failed him. During this career, he gave us a memorable character in Hooligan but also the immortal Alphonse and Gaston. It was Opper who began heavily using word balloons to convey dialogue as opposed to narrative surrounding the drawings.

Given the sameness of the strips to today’s readers, NBM wisely did not go the comprehensive route, but instead offers up a sampling of strips from 1902-1913, scanning the originals in their 2- and 4-color splendor. The book presents the strips horizontal, as intended, and the reproduction is solid. At $25, it’s a little pricey but the overall package and historic importance makes it worth a look.

The care and attention to detail given the direct-to-DVD animated films based on DC Comics’ properties is evident. As a result, watching Green Lantern: First Flight is a visual treat. Following the others in this line, it is entirely on its own and disconnected from any other video so casual watchers will not be burdened with tremendous amounts of continuity.

In fact, the script for this feature, premiering tonight at the San Diego Comic-Con and going on sale Tuesday, does a nice job of encapsulating the necessary backstory for the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps. The film moves along at a nice pace and with most of it taking place off planet, the animators have a terrific time designing locales, aliens, and interpreting the GLC from comics for the screen.  I can quibble and say that I wish the original Gil Kane design for Hal Jordan’s costume were used or that Abin Sur resembled his comic book counterpart but it’s all minor.

The story is a fresh take on Hal Jordan inheriting the power ring and joining the Corps. As adapted from the 1990s version, Sinestro shows up to act as his trainer and reveals his corruption, forcing the student to fight the teacher. On the other hand, in the comics, Sinestro (voiced nicely by Victor Garber) was so manic about instilling order; he first blurred and then stepped over the line between protector and dictator. In this film, Sinestro is just corrupt and dismissive of the Guardians.

The Guardians suffer in translation. Originally, they all appeared identical, based on Israel’s David Ben-Gurion, so they could act in concert. Here, they are more distinctive to the point of looking goofy. They used to be mostly omniscient but here are weak and flawed, annoyed that a flawed human received the great Abin Sur’s ring, forgetting the ring’s programming to seek out the most appropriate candidate. These living power batteries are mishandled and their influence diminished.

Perhaps the biggest change between the comics and the film is that the yellow power that Sinestro adopts is not taken from Parallax, the embodiment of fear, but is some unexplained substance that rivals the green energy the Guardians used for their Corps. It just exists and is nowhere near as dramatically compelling. Screenwriter Alan Burnett usually doesn’t make errors like this and it’s a shame it hurts the film’s impact.

Hal, who was very nicely handled in [[[New Frontier]]], is less an imposing figure here, despite Christopher Meloni’s solid voice work. He questions the Guardians, bonds with his fellow corpsmen, and does heroic work but doesn’t resonate as a hero or as the Greatest Green Lantern of them all. As a result, the film is nowhere near as powerful as it should be.

The two-disc DVD comes complete with feature trailers on the previous animated released along with an intriguing sneak peek at the next offering, September’s [[[Superman & Batman: Public Enemies]]]. A short featurette on [[[Blackest Night]]] is a nice teaser for the comic books. The second disc comes with a short chat with Geoff Johns about Green Lantern along with Johns and others talking about Sinestro and the Guardians. The GL-themed episode of [[[Duck Dodgers]]] is included along with a two-part [[[JL Unlimited]]] animated adventure.

Overall, it’s a nice package and worth a look but the lack of a strong lead character and stereotypical villain posturing robs the story of the potential power.

Here’s a four minute preview of the movie, via MTV SplashPage: